Tag: chronic illness

Queer Anxiety Babiez Distro’s “But You Don’t Look Sick: A Zine About Invisible Illnesses and Disabilities in the Workplace” is a compilation zine about the difficulties of navigating workplaces as an invisibly ill or disabled person. It features personal essays, poetry, and visual art, along with a brief section of legal and informational resources.

Throughout the zine, there is a recurring theme of legal protections and considerations not translating smoothly into real-life coverage. The law may provide for confidential accommodations, but that won’t stop nosy coworkers from inquiring about what they perceive as unfair, or prevent them from making requests that are difficult to decline without disclosing more than you want to.

There is good variation in the disabilities and workplaces represented: various illnesses/disabilities/conditions on both sides of the traditional physical/mental division and jobs ranging from dishwashing and customer service, through college and office jobs. (I have an essay in this zine about the invisibility and erasure of my personal disability and ableism as a concept at my college social justice job.)

Personally, I would have prefered more personal narratives to the information about U.S. and Canadian disability law, which is easier to find in an internet search than the stories shared throughout the rest of the zine. But for someone who needs this information and is too nervous to search for it, stumbling across it in this zine could be just what they need. The page about ableist language is a useful starting point. For readers who want to know more on this topic, I recommend Nik Moreno’s zine This, Not That: A Guide to Eliminating Ableist Language, which I previously reviewed.

I wish, especially for a zine about disability, that the print were larger and the images crisper. Much of the text is too small for me to read comfortably, and some of the text overlaid on Jacqueline Last’s collage “Mechanical Restraints” is too blurry to read, probably as a result of the photocopying process.

The embodied and interpersonal experiences shared in this zine will likely feel familiar to invisibly disabled people and can serve as a guide to abled coworkers and employers of how not to give us a hard-verging-on-illegal time. I’m grateful to Kristen and Maira for editing this collection, which builds community among people like me who can’t always easily find each other in the world — especially in the workplace.